Author 




Title 



Class LD.4:L-. 
Book •JJ.S 



Imprint 



i»— «B9»-l OPO 



\ 



AN ADDRESS, 

delivered before the 
LITERARY SOCIETIES 



GENEVA COLLEGE, 



First of August, 1843. 



BY HOIV. ItlCHAKD ». DAVIS. 



GENEVA, N. Y. : 

SO OTTEN & STOW. 

1843. 






?i-3c3^ 



Geneva College, August 1, 1843. 
Hon. Richard D. Davis: 

Sir— At a meetins of the Alpha Phi Delta and Euglossian Societies, 
the undersigned were appointed a committee to tender you the thanks of their 
respective associations for the very interesting and instructive address wliich 
you have this day delivered before them, and to request a copy of the same 
for publication. 

We have the honor to be, sir, 

Your obedient servants, 

N. ROCHESTER, 
RUSSELL MARTIN, 
E. R. STODDARD, 
CHARLES WOODWARD, 
CALVIN HUSON, Jr., 
J. G. TREADWAY. 



Messrs. N. Rochester, Russell Martin, ^ 

E. R. Sto,ddard, Chas. Woodward, ? Committee, S(C. 

Calvin Huson, Jr., and J. G. Treadway, ) 
Gentlemen— I am duly sensible of the approbation which your Soci- 
eties express for the address which I had the honor to deliver before them ; 
and as I am not conscious of having uttered in it any feeling or sentiment 
which I did not believe to be true and think to be useful, it would ill become 
me to deny its publication. Allow me, gentlemen, to add, that I have been 
most agreeably surprised to find the Institution to which you belong, so well 
deserving a higher reputation and wider patronage — my conviction that it 
will soon enjoy both — and my best wishes for your individual success in 
your Collegiate course and after lives. 

Very respectfully yours, &c., 

RICHARD D. DAVIS. 
Geneva, 4th August, 184.3. 



ADDRESS. 



1 stand here to address two Societies, formed by the 
Students of Geneva College : It is the first time that I have 
ventured to occupy such a position. Much and long did 
I hesitate to assume it ; for the business and habits of my 
life had led me far and forgetfully wandering from these 
occasions, and the topics most appropriate to them. Still 
I remembered, that, like these young men, I once was, as 
they are, the student of a College, and that like me, soon 
will they be as I am, beyond all of youth but the memory 
of its scenes, and mingling in the world of manhood. 

This relation between us seemed to awaken within me 
an interest in them, and to establish on their part, some 
right to such humble services as I could render them. I 
remembered, too, that like the rich and glorious region 
around it, this Institution was but opening its energies in 
youthful effort, upon that long career of usefulness and 
reputation, which we trust will be its history. 

I thought, that coming from a distant residence, to par- 
ticipate in the exercises of this day, would evince that 
natural and proper sympathy in the welfare of our Westj 
which none can feel more sensibly than I do ; and that I 
might here present my offering and testimony, to cement 
and strengthen those ties of interest and patriotism, which 
do and for ever should pervade and encircle every portion 
of the people of our own Empire State. 

Without the science or literature to enrich (for such an 
audience) whatever I should say, I still fancied that even 



an address from me might do some good, if it developed 
in the plainest manner, that interest and connection, which 
all may have in Institutions such as this — if it traced in 
the faintest lines, those benefits which can flow from such 
fountains, upon the broad surface of the community around 
them; and if in any way it illustrated how the higher 
grades of education, may be made useful to the general 
welfare, to individual freedom, and to the great cause of 
human progress. 

And above all, I felt that my own deficiencies might be 
held up to those who hear me, to animate them to a better 
career than I have run, to a more illustrious course, and 
to a higher range and reach in those attainments to which 
they have, as I did, now dedicated their lives. Thus re- 
flecting, I have come here to offer you a few thoughts on 
the design of education, and the duty of educated men, in 
our age and country. 

The young men before me, enjoy peculiar and remark- 
able advantages ; high above those possessed by the great 
mass of their fellow beings. It is of itself great good for- 
tune, to be entering upon manhood at this time, in this 
country ; but that they share, in common with all others 
of their own years. 

For a moment let us turn our attention to the eminent 
and exclusive privileges, which distinguish the few, who, 
like yourselves, hold positions in life which are denied to 
most young men, not only elsewhere, but even in your 
own land. 

How very few of the young men of our country, cither 
do or can have the benefits and blessings which you enjoy. 
Not one of you, but has left at home behind him scores of 
relatives and neighbors, to whom these advantages would 



have been as valuable and as highly valued. The smiles 
of fortune, the affluence and favor of friends, or your own 
more meritorious exertions have placed you within the 
walls of a College, and devoted your daj'-s and nights to 
the cultivation of your moral and intellectual faculties. 
To you, science unfolds her mysteries, and literature prof- 
fers freely all her pleasures. From the multitude of your 
fellows, your fellows in years, and your fellows in natural 
and moral endowment, these things are mostly, if not en- 
tirely withheld ; and here in this peaceful and beautiful 
retreat, protected by the laws and honored by the com- 
munity, you pursue your path of pleasantness, and walk 
the ways of wisdom, surrounded by privileges and oppor- 
tunities, facilities and aids, which provoke industry, and 
reward its efforts. A thousand favoring influences impel 
you forward, in your career. Public munificence, and 
popular approbation, evolve successive contributions in 
your behalf, and even the dull sluggard warms at his 
work, as he remembers the fond mother and proud father, 
whose prayers would invoke heaven's blessing on his pro- 
gress. You seem to be and you are the favorites of for- 
tune, for even envy does not scowl upon you with her 
malignant eye, and all things combine to sustain and up- 
hold, to cheer and encourage you in these prerogatives, 
which do indeed constitute and characterize you as a 
select and privileged order of the people, a chosen class 
elevated above the rest, and endowed with large immu- 
nities, and special enjoyments. 

Now why is all this ? Why are these young men thus 
blessed by heaven, and favored of man ? Why, my young 
friends, are you, as I was, selected or permitted to enjoy 
these things which are denied to so many others, who de- 



serve them full as much as we do, and who perhaps would 
far better improve them ? Why were we taken from the 
multitude around us, and placed where we thus flourish 
above and beyond our fellow men ? What have we done, 
or what can we do more than others, to entitle us to these 
advantages ? How and why is it, that we so few in num- 
ber, are thus pre-eminent in all the enjoyments of life, and 
thus peacefully possess, what so many others so eagerly 
and ardently desire ? Do you answer me that it is be- 
cause, under the goodness of God, your friends or your 
own efforts, have furnished you the means to purchase 
these peculiar and exclusive privileges. Let me then ask 
why even that is allowed, and you permitted to make that 
purchase ? Nay, why are you tolerated in enjoyments 
which others cannot obtain ? No, no, that is not the true 
explanation and vindication of these arrangements of the 
world. The humblest of mortals, the most abject of the 
wretched, the lowest of the degraded, is as much an ob- 
ject of regard in the eye of nature, reason and religion, as 
an angel or a seraph, for he breathes by the inspiration of 
his Maker, the breath of life; and the immortality of here- 
after is his. 

But again. Why do the ninety and nine out of every 
hundred, who can by no possibility have these things, 
allow us to have them ? Surely, they have the power, 
and was there not some good reason against it, as surely - 
they would have the right to prohibit any one individual 
from receiving more of this world's advantages, than can 
be had by all the others. Who or what could prevent a 
community from making all things equal, that can be equal- 
ized, or at least from devoting all that each has, or can 
acquire, to the common use of the whole ? If it would 



be best, then it would be right to render all things into 
one common fund, from which all should share alike. 
And why it is not best, must afford the same and the only 
true answer, for the advantages you are allowed over 
other men. 

Human happiness is the great object of human exis- 
tence, and the only true end, to which we can devote the 
powers of the human race. To promote and secure it, 
instinct, reason and revelation, conspire in confederated 
effort, and common cause. For it men found society, 
establish government, institute property, ordain customs, 
usages and habits, regulate business, intercourse, and edu- 
cation, and arrange all the vast and complex machinery 
of civil, social and individual life. Now what happiness 
is it, which is thus sought to be produced, and for whose 
welfare are these things contrived and executed ? Is it 
for the happiness of one, or of all ? For the welfare of a 
part, or of the whole ? Is it for me, or for you, or for any 
other individual, or for any class of individuals, that this 
great globe, and its myriad population, move and have 
their being f Oh no ! it is not ; but it is for us all, as one 
mighty whole. For the great aggregate of humanity, in 
generations past, present, and to come. As individuals, 
we are nothing, and less than nothing. It is only as mem- 
bers of the human family, that we are any thing, or can 
be any thing, or can have any thing. I am nothing and 
you are nothing, but as we are bound and belong to oth- 
ers, and it is for their sake, and not ours, that we are what 
we are, and have all that we enjoy. It is not our indi- 
viduality, but one membership, and fellowship with others, 
which originates and supports all our rights, claims, and 
powers. It is not we, ourselves, but these others, who 



10 



clollie us vvitli all our enjoyments, and it is because we 
arc of them, and part ol" them, and upheld by them, that 
we are not utterly insignificant, useless and valueless. 
The individual is nothing, and he only rises into impor- 
tance as he expands his relations in the family, the soci- 
ety, tlie community, the nation, the generation, and last 
and highest of all, in his being one of the human race, and 
having a common lot in its weal ;uul woe. 

These views arc beginning to spread abroad in the 
world, and the rights and duties of individuals, arc almost 
every where come to be considered as secondary and sub- 
ordinate to the interests of tlie community to which they 
belong. Wcallh and labor, the foundation and equity of 
all property in them, :ind llie principle of all private ap- 
propriation and accumulation, are now commonly conce- 
ded to rest on no other basis of right and justice than that 
which makes them most conducive to the general good. 
The right of a community to all that each one of its mem- 
bers can do for the common and general welfare, is be- 
come an admitted principle, and the laws and institutions 
of society, are right or wrong as they tend to fulfil or de- 
feat that overruling object. Labor and property have no 
existence in society, but ns they arc developed and mani- 
fested, maintained and modiiiod by human law; and that 
law can have no soundness and no sanction, but as it pro- 
motes the general good, and works out the welfare of the 
whole, by its action on the individuals whom it allects and 
inlluences. Private property and all individual appropria- 
tion are right, and ought only to be permitted, because 
under wise regulations they lead to greater industry, and 
llius to greater general aggregate accumulation. It is the 
application of these principles, which is working the large 



11 

and liberal reforms of ihe world, and which is elevating 
the condition of the mass of mankind, by securing to their 
service and advantage the fruits of their own industry. 

I have introduced this topic for two reasons : First, 
that I might give my passing reprobation, upon that mod- 
ern socialism, which seeks to pervert these principles, be- 
yond the bounds and against the instincts of nature, and 
to work out a theory hostile to the best relations of life, 
and thus to overthrow the principles themselves, in the 
monstrous consequences which are deduced from them, 
as they would do, who would so change tlie organization 
of society, as to sink the individual and the family into 
those mushroom associations, whose outrageous absurdity 
exempts them from any severer censure, than that of idle 
follies. 

My other reason was, to enable me to show to you, that 
your great and peculiar advantages rest on the same foun- 
dation as do all other advantages, which are allowed to 
others. Your education and elevation in society are in- 
dulged and permitted on the same principle as are all oth- 
er individual aggrandizement and acquisition, and for the 
same cause are you encouraged to improve your minds 
that other men are to improve their estates. The facul- 
ties of the mind are as much the rightful property of the 
whole community as the sinews of the body, and men arc 
educated not for the good it will do to themselves but to 
others. It is only because the greater amount of general 
good flows from individual property, that all property is 
not and ought not to be held in common, and it is on that 
ground alone that mental cultivation is sanctioned in any 
one beyond what all could share in. Providence proposes 
happiness here and hereafter as the reward of piety and 
virtue, and at the same time entwines these motives around 



12 



the welfare of the universe as its chief and greatest glory. 
Society seeking how it may best promote the prosperity 
of all, enlists the selfishness of the heart in aid of the ge- 
neral good, and under wise modifications swells the uni- 
versal aggregate of acquisition by those incentives which 
each feels and follows as he struggles for his individual 
advancement. The good of all, therefore, and not your 
good is the reason and the right of your allowance to ac- 
quire your education. Your own happiness, honor or glo- 
ry, your personal elevation and improvement are not the 
considerations which place you here and confer upon you 
this superiority of condition. It is not on your own ac- 
count, but for the sake of others, and because it is best 
for them and not for you. You may come here for your 
own sake, or for any motive that you please to pursue ; but 
we, the rest of the world, permit you to come, because we 
think it best for us, not for you, to have these advantages, 
or we would not allow it. We sanction, we sustain you 
here in order that your high improvement in moral and 
intellectual culture may diffuse a wider influence and 
larger service over the great interests of the whole. 

The proud farmer who stands on his own soil, won by 
his own industry, feels no doubt that it is all his own, and 
that he can use it or abuse it at his pleasure ; and so he 
can by the law but not by morals, not by principle, nor yet 
by the spirit of that law which permits him to do it. — 
That law was made to encourage him to get his farm ; to 
use it as it should be used ; to make it most conducive to 
the greatest good. If he be a thoughtful and honest man, 
he will feel and obey this duty, for he will know that he 
has no right or title to his estate, but under the law and 
by the law whose trustee he is, to employ it in such way 



13 



as will most contribute to the general welfare. So too, of 
the educated man ; however great his faculties and at- 
tainments, he holds them for the good of all. God o-ave 
them, that man might have the benefit of them, and soci- 
ty has a right to their most beneficial employment. The 
obligation of all men to society at large are perpetual and 
immoveable, overruling and paramount. We are prone 
to forget them and to feel that society owes us far more 
than we can be indebted to it. Intellectual endowment 
seems to be so directly heaven-bestowed, and intellectual 
attainment to come from so few sources around us, that 
talented and educated men are apt to overlook and disre- 
gard the claims which the community has upon them. — ■ 
But there can be no real distinction between the obliaa- 
tions to employ intellectual and material faculties and at- 
tainments for the general weal ; one as much as the other 
belongs to all, and both are permitted to be used for indi- 
vidual purposes, because that most promotes the welfare 
of all. One of the reasons why your parents were allow- 
ed to acquire private estates, was that their solicitude for 
you might prompt them to greater exertions for the means 
to send and maintain you here, that by the education you 
might thus receive, you might be of more use in the world, 
and fulfil a larger duty to others. 

In the views we have thus considered we may discover 
the legitimate principle and purpose of education : We 
may learn by what standard to estimate its character ; the 
philosophy of its rights, powers and pretensions ; the 
scope of its appropriate influence, and the nature and 
manner of its action on the great interests of mankind in 
that vast futurity of improvement, which we believe that 
it can be made to accomplish. Contemplated in this light 



14 



how differently appears not only education, but wealth, 
power and all the institutions and arrangements of the 
world from that usual estimation in which for so many 
ages they have been regarded, and thus understood, all 
history seems to be a dream or a fiction too improbable to 
be real, too absurd to be true. Until recently that great 
principle, the general good, seems to have been unknown 
and unregarded, and government and society almost ex- 
clusively constituted and conducted for the few, and not 
the many. 

The whole action of human affairs has moved under 
culminating tendencies as if all things sought the forma- 
tion and elevation of leaders and the depression of the 
masses ; the lifting up of privileged orders and the humil- 
iation of the great body of mankind, rendering them trib- 
utary to and dependent on the limited number thus raised 
above them. Looking at the past, one almost fancies that 
millions have lived and toiled and suffered to sustain thou- 
sands, and had no other object or purpose in their being ; 
that this world had been made peopled, and continued for 
the senseless and monstrous business of supporting in it 
this small and insignificant number of its inhabitants, who 
occupied all its pleasant places, engrossed all its honors, 
and consumed all its richness and enjoyments. It was 
not strange, that in such periods, men supposed that edu- 
cation and all intellectual advancement were especially 
and exclusively intended for the benefit of the few. In- 
deed, that small portion of our race who usually denom- 
inate themselves the higher orders or better classes of 
society, have had pretty much all to say in this world ; 
they figure in its history, monopolize its fame, possess its 
property, control its action, rule in its government, regu- 



15 



late its institutions, and generally have contrived to ex- 
tract from the many millions below them, all that could 
be made to minister to their own possessions, powers, 
privileges and pleasures. 

But, thank God, this is so no longer. The Saviour has 
been upon the earth. He came to give temporal as well 
as eternal happiness. He spoke as man never spake be- 
fore, for he brought the wisdom of heaven to rule in the 
affairs of earth. He brought to light not only immortality, 
but life : the life that we now live and all that appertains 
to it. Those sublime and heaven-born precepts, to do 
unto others as ye would they should do unto you, and to 
love your neighbor as yourself, difficult and hard as they 
are to be obeyed, have already changed the whole aspect 
and action of human affairs. They have already wrought 
more miracles in the moral world than are recorded in the 
Scriptures, or chronicled in the church, and they will go 
on conquering and to conquer, until consummated in the 
last and final glory of our race. To whom did this Sav- 
iour come ? He came to no class, no sect, no kindred, no 
nation, and no generation of men. But he came to all and 
for all, to you and to me, to every one, to every age and 
country and clime. He came not to kings, not to princes, 
not to privileged orders, but to the people. He was cra- 
dled in a manger, not in a palace. He had not where to 
lay his head, and he slept in the cottages of the poor; and 
with the widow and the orphan, with the publican and the 
sinner, he kept his company. He was the God of the 
people, of the whole people : God over all, blessed for ever. 

Our land has been the first to inscribe these mighty and 
magnificent truths upon the broad banner of her social and 
political organization, and our age is almost the first that 



IG 



}ias felt them moving on the wide waters of humanity. 
There was no true notion of the rights of man, no just or 
complete conception of human freedom and universal jus- 
tice, until llio Saviour proclaimed them. Freedom, equal- 
ity, justice, benevolence, the mutual dcpendance of man 
on man, the reciprocal interest of all in each, and each in 
all, the rights of the poor, the privileges of the humble, 
the dignity and glory of our divine human nature, its right 
to the cultivation of its transcendent and immortal attri- 
butes, of its moral powers and intellectual faculties, the 
uplifting of man and of woman in their lowliest estate, 
bidding them to stand erect in the imnge and likeness of 
their God, and to look upwards from earth to heaven, — 
these, all these, now the theme of so many tongues and 
the hope of so many hearts, were unknown, or only seen 
through a glass darkly, until Christianity revealed them to 
the conception and understantling of the world. 

Having thus contemplated the source and character of 
those principles in which we would look for the true ob- 
ject of education, namely, the good that it will due to 
others ami not the cdncatcd themselves, except as they 
form a part of the whole, let us briefly consider a single 
objection which may be ottered against our proposition. 
Some ma}-- object to tliis doctrine as too low, too humbling, 
too levelling : that it degrades the intellect and learning 
of tlic world from their high estate, and makes them trib- 
utary and subservient to the common mind of the com- 
munity, the common sense of mankind. These views, 
the}'- may say, will depress and discourage genius, and 
subject all the higher grades of intellect to the ordinary 
measure of mind, making their popular estimation such 
as to diminish their iuHuence and authority over others. I 



17 



do not know that this will not be so, and for one I do not 
care if it is so. I have a profound respect for the plain, 
substantial, honest common sense of the world, and be- 
lieve it to be the only safeguard and guide in private or 
public matters. Genius is often above or below this un- 
assuming companion, and talent frequently runs a career 
brilliant in mischief and magnificent in disaster, splendidly 
ruinous, and gloriously frivolous. The men of genius and 
talent occasion nearly all the commotion and calamities of 
the world, and in our own community you cannot look 
into a circle which has not been more or less injured, if 
not wrecked, by its luminary. Too much deference has 
ever been awarded, not only to genius and talent, but to 
learning, wealth, rank, office, power, and all the ordinary 
distinctions of earth. We are eternally overrating the 
importance of these things, our obligations to them, and 
our dependence on them. The great men and great things 
of life are for ever enhancing themselves, seeking to exalt 
their own usefulness and consequence, and to undervalue 
the humble and common concerns of the world, and the 
people who arc engaged in them. Wo can do very well 
without great men or great things, as men and things have 
been accounted great in most periods, and I am not one 
who would allow them half the sway and influence which 
they are so fain to insolently usurp and display ; nor would 
1 award them any value or any respect, but as they were 
instrumental in promoting the welfare and progress of the 
common people and common concerns of life. One good 
common citizen is worth an hundred great men, whether 
they be fops or fiddlers, fashionable gentlemen or learned 
fools, swindling operators or faithless politicians, bankrupt 

merchants or reckless adventurers. 
3 



18 



Our country has adopted as its foundation and glory, 
that the common people, the mass of the community, are 
its masters, owners, and controllers, and that all its con- 
cerns are to be conducted for their benefit, and to afford 
them the greatest amount of human happiness. We be- 
lieve that this world belongs to the people who are in it, 
to the whole people, and not to any class or part or por- 
tion of them. And above all things do I hold that this 
country belongs to the people in it, as much to the poor as 
to the rich, to the ignorant as the educated, and that its 
entire policy, usages and institutions, are to be created and 
conducted for the good of all, and that its talents and edu- 
cation are equally obedient and subservient to this same 
common authority of all over all. 

The rich have no more authority over the property of 
the country than the poor, and they hold all that they have 
as much by the permission of the poor as by their own, 
and not by any power or right but that which the poor as 
much as themselves have bestowed upon them for the 
common good of the poor as well as rich. The educated 
have no right to education more than the ignorant, and 
they enjoy their education by the permission of the unedu- 
cated as much as by their own, and for the common good 
of all, the ignorant as well as the educated. If this ser- 
vice to all, this usefulness to all, this subordination to all, 
be to degrade education and talents, let them be degraded 
to the lowest depth, for then their depression is the eleva- 
tion of humanity, and well fulfils the spirit and purpose of 
that religion from which we derive all our principles which 
are worth possessing. All men cannot be highly educa- 
ted, but it is beneficial in the general result that some few 
should be, and hence you are educated, that j^ou may sub- 



19 



serve that general result and promote that general good. 
I can see no other basis on which to place your pre-emi- 
nent advantages, and if this humbles your pride of intel- 
lect and the lofty arrogance of talent and learning, I can 
only say for one that I would bow them to the earth and 
bury them beneath it, to advance but one step in the ele- 
vation and happiness of the human kind. 

To make men useful to their fellow men, is then the 
great design of education. What form and extent of it 
should be adopted, we will not here enquire, but leaving 
this branch of our theme, let me next turn your attention 
to some of the duties which devolve on you as educated 
men, in the present period and position of your country. 

We have seen that Christianity has shed a new light on 
the duty and destiny of men in this world, as well as in 
the next. It has brought all classes and conditions to the 
same test and standard ; that of utility to human happiness, 
and all the more elevated pursuits of life are subjected to 
the same judgment as the lowliest of human avocations. 
We judge the throned monarch by the same rule that we 
would apply to his humblest subject, and the prince and 
the pauper, the philosopher and the peasant, the ignorant 
and the learned, the rich and the poor, the mighty and the 
humble, all alike are bound by this law, and held submis- 
sive to its mandates. As men of education, you fall within 
this authority, and your duty is prescribed and illustrated 
by the precepts and examples which it has bestowed upon 
mankind. You cannot escape this doom, for the wide 
world is awaking to it, and every where men are begin- 
ning to account themselves to be men, and entitled to the 
rights of men. The glorious multitude of our race will 
not longer remain as they have been for ages past, but 



20 



instinct and burning with new thoughts and hopes and 
feelings and desires of better things, they have risen to 
seek for their long lost inheritance, and will not rest or 
pause until it shall be recovered. 

The education of the world has thus far done but little 
for human happiness, in comparison with what it can and 
ought to be made to accomplish. The most careless ob- 
server sees at a glance that infinitely less than should be, 
is realized from the labor and intellect of the human race. 
It does not require one quarter of the time and toil of a 
people to procure a superabundant subsistence for the 
whole, and if well and wisely regulated and instructed, 
every community ought to afford to every competent and 
industrious citizen, a comfortable livelihood, and ample 
means and opportunity for moral and intellectual improve- 
ment and recreation. We see this, we feel this, when we 
look at any other people or any other period. It is only 
now and here, amidst our prejudices, habits and engage- 
ments, that we fear it cannot be attained. But much has 
been done ; enough to encourage the faith that more can 
be, and the educated of the world should be, the advocates 
of that reformation which will achieve it. In all past times, 
nineteen-twentieth s have labored, not for themselves, and 
to enlarge the circle of their own comfort and enjoyments, 
but for the other twentieth, to furnish them with ease and 
opulence, luxury and pleasure, while they themselves were 
destitute of half the necessaries of life and shut out from 
moral and intellectual culture. Now this ought not so to 
be, and I trust in God that the time has come, that the 
day-spring from on high hath visited us, and that it cannot 
be so much longer. The institutions, customs, opinions, 
education and whole arrangement of society which pro- 



21 



duced such deplorable and disheartening results, must be 
wrong ; radically, inherently wrong ; and it must be right, 
morally, religiously, gloriously right, to go for their reform. 
Until latterly, the world sat in dead despair of any 
considerable improvement of its condition. Amendment 
seemed hopeless : all things had been so, so long, that 
men feared they must remain so for ever. Christianity, 
which had revealed these better things and brighter 
hopes, which had imparted this new and nobler aim to 
human effort, was so slow and difficult in its advance, 
so often perverted to other and opposing purposes, that 
even its divine power seemed almost unequal to the ref- 
ormation it had disclosed and promised to perform. — 
Nay, rehgion itself, was at times so interwoven and incor- 
porated in the forms and modification of vicious institu- 
tions and opinions, as to lend them its sanction, and lo 
resist the plainest reformations of society and the state, 
lest they should prove to be heresies in the church. Still 
less encouragement was to be found in the aid which the 
arts and sciences gave to disseminate the principles of 
Christianity, and apply them to the affairs of men, for 
learning and talents had too often opposed all popular im- 
provement, and sustained the worst systems of oppression 
and injustice. The institutions and mode of education of 
former periods, are not sufficiently favorable to the eleva- 
tion and advancement of the mass of men, and to the dif- 
fusion amongst them of those blessings and advantages to 
which they are justly entitled. In our age and country, 
this matter requires the most enlightened consideration. 
Our colleges and seminaries of instruction, and the entire 
system of education, need an adaptation to the times, to 
the spirit of the age, to the genius of the country. They 



22 



must not be depositaries of the obsolete and rusty senti- 
ments, doctrines and customs, of antecedent eras, but 
regenerated and relumined watch-towers, to enlighten and 
direct the onward progress of mankind. They must not 
foster and inculcate the morals and manners and opinions 
which were placed around the privileged orders and abuses 
of the earth, but show in their action and influence, how 
thoroughly they partake and feel the character and impulse 
of the present day. I regard it as the first duty of the 
educated men of America, to conform, accommodate and 
apply our institutions of education to the great and funda- 
mental principles and policy of the country; to make them 
nurseries of American thought, feelings, action and man- 
ners, fit and fair, full and flowing fountains for freemen to 
drink from, from generation to generation. 

Some men suppose that the whole system of education 
needs a thorough reform, and that more of the practical 
and every day duties and cares and character of life should 
be intermixed with the usual studies of the College. Un- 
doubtedly much of what is learned has no real value for 
any practical purpose, except as it is an exercise of the 
faculties, and that is frequently more than counterbalanced 
by its frivolity and the vicious taste it engenders in the 
mind. Before those so much more competent to decide, 
I will not risk an opinion on such a subject; but this I will 
say, that education in this country must be modernized, 
humanized, republicanized, christianized. It must not in 
its higher departments be considered or cultivated as a 
substitute for all participation in the affairs of men, as an 
excuse for indifference to the common concerns of life, as 
an exemption from the usual responsibilities of the citizen, 
an apology for scholastic acerbity of manners and aristo- 



23 



cratic assumption over others, as a shield for licentious- 
ness of conduct, and an absolution from the plain and 
homely virtues of ordinary life. Such tendencies have 
too much marked it in every age, and we need a double 
vigilance against them. It is the nature of education as 
it is of wealth, power, business and manners, and indeed 
of all the distinctions of the world, as society grows older, 
to run into these exclusive and aristocratic tendencies, and 
to separate the favorites of fortune widely, distantly, dis- 
dainfully, from the common privileges, pleasures, and pur- 
suits of the people. We are bound to resist and over- 
come this ; to render our country broad, general, diffu- 
sive, equal, universal in its advantages ; to curtail all that 
is taken from the many for the benefit of the few, and to 
repress no less the presumption of education and the ar- 
rogance of attainment, than the pride of wealth and inso- 
lence of position. The aristocracy of talent and learning 
changes with almost every generation, and seldom lasts 
as long as the hereditary transmission of estates. The 
genius of to-day is to-morrow the parent of a fool, and 
the child of a philosopher is often the inmate of a prison, 
or some poor laborer brightening his dulled faculties in 
the hardships of poverty and toil, that his descendants 
thus renovated may renew the lustre of their lineage. It 
is to me one of the most pleasing contemplations of our 
country, that here and under our system families rise but 
to fall, and fall but to rise ; that races blend in Babel-like 
confusion and indistinguishable commixture. From the 
great bulk of our population are constantly emerging to 
eminence some few who flourish for a time and then in 
their descendants sink back again into the common mass, 
or often go down below it, and at the same time from that 



24 



mass are continually falling those who in their posterity, 
recuperate, and regain their pristine condition. The the- 
ory and principle of our community is to take care of this 
great mass, and to diminish these two extremes, to give 
to those above it no special advantages to sustain them 
there, and to impose on those below it no weight to keep 
them there. We have little solicitude or consideration for 
either extreme beyond what is necessary to prevent their 
injuring the great mass, and to facilitate their return to 
the common fold and fellowship of the whole. 

The educated men of the United States, are under a 
peculiar and paramount responsibility to adapt and em- 
ploy the talents and education of the country to the ser- 
vice of the human race, in conformity with our institutions 
and positions. We are making the great experiment of 
the world. Our progress, thus far, has wrought wonders 
over the face of the earth. It has created new views, 
opinions and thoughts, every where, and already men find 
new and strange elements at work in human affairs. — 
Among these, the power of public opinion is most con- 
spicuous and remarkable. In our land and under our sys- 
tem, it is supreme and omnipotent. Educated men have 
most to do in its formation and regulation, and this consti- 
tutes their chief obligation to their fellow men. If they 
did not influence others, it would be of little consequence 
what they themselves might think, but acting on other 
minds, and imparting their own sentiments and views to 
all classes of society, they almost rule the moral world. 
The success or failure of this country in the great experi- 
ment of self-government, and in improving and equalizing 
the condition of its inhabitants, is now so far determined 
that we may say it is certain to succeed, if we but will 



25 



and act to accomplish it. We have gone so far, that all 
the world besides cannot defeat or disturb our progress, 
and if we do fail, it will be our own folly that will cause 
it. The faith and confidence and resolution of the people 
to carry on the work, is all that is wanting to ensure the 
conduct and policy that will complete it. Public opinion 
is the embodiment of that faith, confidence and resolution, 
and while that opinion is right, sound and firm, all is safe, 
and the great result is sure. Our educated men, we who 
have had these advantages, originate and regulate that 
opinion, and give to it all its pulsations, energy and tone. 
How important, therefore, is it, that such men should be 
thoroughly imbued with the temper of the times, the de- 
signs of the age, the principles of the country, the benev- 
olence and charity which Christianity has infused into all 
the purposes of the period we live in. Under these views, 
an American citizen ought to feel that his responsibility is 
greatest among the sons of men, and looking forward to 
such momentous results, who will dare to despair of his 
country, or to withhold his efforts, in sunshine and in storm, 
from this, the common cause of our common kind. 

There are those who think that education cannot do 
harm, that every advance in the arts and learning and 
refinement, can only be instrumental in diffusing human 
happiness ; that individual intelligence only does good to 
the individual and all connected with him, and that the 
general cultivation of society but adds so much the more 
to its enjoyments and welfare. I do not hold this opinion, 
and to my mind the history of the world refutes it. A 
man may be intelligent and accomplished, at the expense 
of all his happiness, and a nation may be civilized, en- 
riched and refined, at the ruin of its comfort and welfare. 
4 



86 



Something more and better than art and science, learning 
and civilization, opulence and refinement, are alike indis- 
pensable to individual or national well-being ; neither of 
them has yet been or ever will be found without a sound 
moral sentiment, vigorous and substantial common habits 
and virtues, honest, equal and just purposes, and a gene- 
rous industry, and unless they are associated and combined 
with these humble but more important traits, they are a 
misfortune rather than a blessing to the individual and to 
the community. 

The civilization, intelligence and refinement of the world 
have been varying from age to age, and have existed in 
every degree, without much apparent connection with, or 
effect upon, the condition of the great body of mankind. 
Nor do the expanded philanthropy and general effort for 
human improvement which distinguish our era, originate 
or proceed from any superiority of intellectual attainment 
that we may assert over other periods. Our age boasts 
itself better than all that have gone before it. But there 
is much to warrant the belief that in former times, of which 
we know nothing save that they have been, all the arts of 
life, and the learning and civilization of the world, were 
more advanced than they now are, or perhaps ever will be 
again. Much of what we think new, may be the mere 
recovery of what was lost, and although we perceive that 
we surpass some antecedent periods, it is but too appa- 
rent, that in many of our boasted improvements, we are 
only progressing over a career long ago familiar and long 
ago forgotten. The discoveries of the last fifty years, 
indicate the foimer existence over the whole earth, of na- 
tions and races unknown to our history, and of arts that 
we know not enough of to comprehend what they were. 



27 



Our own continent is full of these vestiges of an unknown 
past, whose traces demonstrate a state of society most 
extraordinary and inexplicable by all our records and tra- 
ditions. Similar results have followed researches in other 
quarters of the globe. But even in periods more known 
to us, it is certain that a civilization and intellectual ad- 
vancement have existed equal to, if not exceeding our own, 
and surpassing all our trophies of art and science, ele- 
gance and refinement. We are not in all these things 
what others have been. The cities of other days, the pub- 
lic works, the perfection of the fine arts, the range of the 
sciences, and all the accomplishments of life, went far 
beyond our knowledge ; and even in the means of sub- 
sistence, the ancients have sustained a population which 
our best agricultural, mechanical and commercial resources 
could not support. 

And yet all this has happened time after time, without 
benefitting the great body of the people, or elevating their 
condition or improving their enjoyments, without making 
them freer, wiser, better or happier. The few only have 
enjoyed any good from them, and to the many they have 
been as if they were not, or worse. Evidently improve- 
ment in art and science ought to advance and augment the 
general happiness. We wonder that it has been so little 
beneficial to the many, and men sometimes doubt if an 
advanced state of society be in fact favorable to the true 
interests of mankind. At this day, in some countries, 
where the arts of life are most perfectly known and prac- 
tised, and where science and religion burn and blaze with 
focal intensity, the condition of the great community of 
citizens grows only worse and worse, from year to year, 
as the nation increases in power, wealth, luxury, and re- 



28 



finement, and the people sink in their enjoyments as the 
empire rises in energy, greatness and grandeur. 

This ought not to be the history of our country. It is 
the solemn and imperious duty of our educated men, to 
prevent it, and to reach a far different and better result in 
our futurity. We must send forward this nation under 
other auspices, and to another destiny. We have already 
started under them ; we propose to accomplish the free- 
dom, equality, elevation and enlightenment of the people 
as a whole, their general happiness and comfort, their en- 
joyment of more of bodily, intellectual and moral good, 
than has yet been known. This can be done, this must 
be done, but it can only be done by the enlightened, lib- 
eral and uniform agency and influence of the intelligent 
and elevated in society. They must come up to this work 
and transfuse into the civil and social progress of the peo- 
ple, the living spirit of this better being that we hope for — 
the transforming energy and potency that will convert all 
advancement into an instrument of good, to all that will 
arrest the tendency to aristocratic distinctions and op- 
pressions, as society grows older and riper in the arts, in 
knowledge, in opulence and refinement. May we not fear 
that in much of our rapid progress, we have been too eager 
to enlarge our wealth and intelligence, our power and 
resources, our improvements and civilization, and too un- 
mindful of the cultivation of those moral sentiments and 
feelings, those habits, manners and virtues, which alone 
can preserve and perpetuate our devotion to freedom, our 
general equality, and our common welfare. Be it your 
part and mine to acquit ourselves of this obligation, by 
resisting all things hostile to the rights, privileges, powers, 
and immunities of the people, which tend to the humilia- 



29 



tion of the humble and the elevation of the exalted, and 
so far as we can, to render the onward march of our 
community a triumphant and glorious fulfilment of its 
principles, its promises, and its hopes. 

The political duties of the educated in this country, are 
of such obvious importance, that I shall be excused for 
adverting to them on this occasion. Many of you are aware 
that I am very much of a politician, and, it may be, too 
much of a partisan ; but I know too well the proprieties 
of this place, to introduce at this time, any thing of a party 
character. Here, we have nothing to do with party, and 
what I shall say to you will be general, and as applicable 
to the one party as the other. In this country, we are, and 
must be, to more or less extent, universally politicians, 
and we are made so by the nature and character of our 
institutions. The forms of our government invest us with 
certain rights which cannot be enjoyed, and impose on us 
certain duties which cannot be discharged, without some 
participation in the politics around us. Every man holds 
in his hands a portion of the power of the State. It is 
conferred on him, not for his mere individual gratification, 
or honor or advantage, but for the benefit of his country, 
and he is bound to exercise it, bound to be a politician, 
bound to vote at every election, according to the convic- 
tions of his judgment and the dictates of his conscience. 
Believing these things, and urging them on your adoption, 
and assuming that you ought and are to be of one party 
or the other, permit me to present a few considerations 
that well deserve the attention of educated men in every 
party that we by any possibility can have. One of the 
most serious difficulties in our system, perhaps its veriest 
vice, is the impetuosity of its progress and that insatiate 



30 



propensity to perpetual excitement and change which it 
engenders in the popular mind. With us power rests and 
subsists on public opinion, and this makes every party 
anxious to secure to itself the influence of any present 
matter of general favor, to catch the popularity of the 
hour, to study for some new thing to captivate the popu- 
lar feeling. Hence our people are incessantly besieged 
with new notions, fanciful reforms of imaginary or real 
abuses, visionary changes, chimerical measures, and a 
length and breadth, and height and depth of schemes for 
the public good which nothing could supply but an inven- 
tion fired by the passion for place and power. A people 
thus assailed in every form and from every quarter, and 
who know that they have the ability to do or not to do as 
they please, are in some danger of becoming prone to act 
and fond of changes. In individual matters it would be 
dangerous, and in public affairs nothing can be more dis- 
astrous than too free and frequent fluctuations. The ear- 
ly age and boundless prosperity of the country, the ardor 
and enterprise of the national character, the daring and 
ready versatility of our pursuits, add to this peril and ex- 
pose us to more than ordinary difficulties. We change 
too fast, too often, and too much. It is the pest of our le- 
gislation and a general infirmity of our people, in their 
business, politics, and society, fomenting and diffusing dis- 
content, excitement, dissension and confusion in all class- 
es and conditions of the community. The men of educa- 
tion should in their appropriate sphere and position, cast 
their weight into the opposite scale, and serve as the bal- 
ancing power in our social and political machine. The 
restraint of such men on their own party is of excellent 
and efficient service, checking the impetuosity of popular 



31 



impulse, maturing and moderating political movements, 
assuaging the severity of party contests, and giving stead- 
iness to the great progress of the country. In the politi- 
cal storm, when the winds and waves of public commo- 
tion threaten our national bark with shipwreck, then, in 
their respective parties, their counsel and their voice 
should be heard above the tempest, speaking for modera- 
tion, forbearance, conciliation, confidence and peace. 

Allied to this duty is another of analagous, and, it may 
be, equal importance. The progress of society developes 
two great and conflicting influences struggling for mas- 
tery, in every community. They are the power of prop- 
erty and the power of persons, or as they are often desig- 
nated, capital and labor, and between them, in all ages 
and countries and politics, has existed an unending con- 
test, in which, however, wealth has usually prevailed. 
We have set our system in operation for a different des- 
tiny. We give no power to wealth but its moral influence, 
and we bestow on persons the entire authority of the State, 
irrespective of their possessions. The nature and instinct 
of property, is, to accumulate, to enlarge, to conglomerate 
and to influence, to this, its vital purpose, the business and 
concerns of the community. Wealth is power to a great 
extent, and for many uses, and it unerringly and inevitably 
insinuates its influence into the legislation, commerce, busi- 
ness, intercourse, society, and general action of the world. 
Although we have taken from it all legal and political 
authority — although we seek to diffuse and distribute it 
throughout the community in small, rather than large es- 
tates — although we have shorn it of many of its attributes, 
and give it no more than simple naked protection, still it 
is not to be denied or disguised, that the tendency of the 



32 



property of the country is invariably and inherently at 
work, to reduce and diminish the income, or wages or earn- 
ings of labor, down to the cheapest subsistence, in order 
that all not thus consumed, may enhance its own profits, 
may render its share large, and labors' share small, of the 
results of human industry. The steadfast, strong, subtle, 
silent action of wealth, its ver}^ function and essence ful- 
fils the parable, that unto every one that hath, shall be 
given, and he shall have abundance ; but from him that 
hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath. 
We see this exemplified in our own national career. Al- 
ready the increase of wealth in many cities and sections 
of the country, has rendeied the transition from poverty 
to even a moderate competence, an impassable gulf, to 
much the larger portion of the people. Already the ex- 
travagance and style of general life, which the rich and 
fashionable foster into repute, and thus force into common 
use, exhausts all and more than most young men can ac- 
quire for themselves and families. Already the currents 
of aggregation have swollen beyond the proper bounds, 
and that recent calamitous expansion of the credit system 
was no more than an effort to establish upon a fiction and 
a sham, the artificial and unnatural concentration and con- 
solidation of property in larger masses than its rightful 
owners could combine it ; and even now, poor young men 
find it more and more difficult to commence their business, 
whether they be professional men, merchants, mechanics, 
or farmers. It is become harder to be poor, than it used 
to be, and it is harder to be poor than it ought to be. — 
These evils are incident to the existence of wealth in every 
form, and it cannot be without them to a greater or less 
degree. They cannot be eradicated, cannot be abolished , 



33 



but they may be resisted, reduced, alleviated, mitigated. 
You, as educated men, are bound to aid in this result. 
You, if you have caught the inspiration of that philan- 
thropy which your education should teach you — if you 
have learned to look on man as your fellow being, and 
entitled to something more than the beggarly elements of 
toil, and poverty and humiliation, as a being to be impro- 
ved on earth and fitted for heaven, to be elevated in his 
moral nature, and exalted in his intellectual faculties, you 
will be found in this contest in its every form, on the side 
of man and of woman, against the dominion of money and 
the ascendancy of wealth. Around you will gather the 
poor and the humble, the sons and daughters of industry, 
they whose labor makes this world all that it is, they who 
ask but little and have not much, they who seek no wrong 
and only would not be wronged, they who love freedom 
and only wish the privilege of enjoying what they earn — 
these, the wide mass of every community, these will be 
around you and with you ; and it is for them now, and in 
all future time, for their countless millions, that you must 
stand forth as defender, advocate, and friend. Believe 
me, that no cause can be better, no service nobler; in life, 
it will be your proudest honor, and at death, you will go 
down to a grave bedewed and consecrated by the tears of 
the lowly and the poor, the widow and the orphan. 

Another duty which seems to me severely incumbent on 
educated men, at the present time, shall conclude the dis- 
course which I have already extended too far. Men of 
talents and education, they who occupy the foreground of 
society, ought to exhibit the best examples of integrity and 
high general moral excellence. God endows them, and 
men permit them to enjoy these eminent distinctions for 



34 



the good that it will do to the world, and as the means to 
effect that good, it is right to exact such examples from 
them. I cannot sanction a sentiment which we sometimes 
hear promulged, and more frequently observe acted in 
societ}'', that the possession of high talents and great at- 
tainments, exempts their possessors from the common du- 
ties of common life, and acquits them of censure for de- 
linquences and offences, which would disgrace ordinary 
individuals. I would hold them to a severer discipline 
and a more rigid accountability, for their influence, whe- 
ther pernicious or beneficial, is too extensive and effective 
to admit of any such allowance. 

And thus much of the general obligation you are under 
as to your moral bearing. The particular duty that I 
would now inculcate and impress on your hearts, is this ; 
that when you go from these halls, and enter upon the 
world, you will do so with a firm determination to be hon- 
est men, to pay your debts, to live within your means, and 
to provide a competency for your own wants. 

The aristocracy of the old world pillage the people by 
force, or by the forms of the law. They openly claim a 
right to an easy and abundant subsistence from the earn- 
ings of others, and they frankly and above-board emplo}' 
the authority and power to obtain and enjoy it. We con- 
demn this, but we have a meaner aristocracy, a mushroom 
tribe, who plunder a livelihood from others by arts and 
practices not less culpable, and still more contemptible. 
Where in this wide Union of ours, ma}^ you look abroad 
that you do not behold scores of men living and who have 
long lived in flush abundance, beyond the style of nine- 
tenths of the population about them, and who yet never 
earned a dollar, never had a dollar, and never spent a dol- 



35 



lar, which did not justly belong to some one else ; men 
who live in comfort and luxury, and operate in easy busi- 
ness, or some indolent apology for none at all, while their 
much-wronged creditors, with their families, go unpaid, 
and often unclothed and unfed. I know that many an 
honest man is unfortunate and cannot pay his debts. God 
forbid that I should add one pang to his sorrow, or a fea- 
ther's weight to his misfortunes. Such men I would not, 
I do not censure, and such men I cannot harm ; for the 
sympathy and confidence of those who know them, will 
shield them from reproof, and defend them from the an- 
imadversions that I would apply to those only who deserve 
them. But what I mean to assail, and to warn you to 
avoid and to oppose, is, that too prevalent evil of our land 
— the laxity and licentiousness with which men fail and 
omit to make payment of their debts, and then pass on 
through life in apparent repute and estimation, as if no 
such thing had ever happened. The tone of public sen- 
timent on this subject, has run down too low, and it should 
be restored and elevated. A man's standing ought to be 
affected by his insolvency, unless it clearly occurred with- 
out his fault. The reckless career of too many a,mongst 
us, of young men who enter upon large business destitute 
of capital, capacity and conduct, and dash on in extrava- 
gance and desperation, at the expense of whom it may 
concern, until they explode in an honorable assignment to 
and for some kindred genius, and then renew and repeat 
the same career of folly, fraud and prodigality throughout 
their lives, is not consistent with morals, or compatible 
with the public good. We can impose no restraint on this 
evil but public opinion, and that is abundantly sufficient, 
if it is properly awakened and renovated to the subject. 



3G 



It is lime that the moral feelings of society moved in this 
matter, and you can do no better service to your countiy 
than to set your lives, and actions, and influence and ex- 
ample, against this enormous abuse. I am well aware, 
that, by uttering these sentiments, I shall incur much cen- 
sure from those who fall within their reproof. But I have 
not come here to gain their favor or applause. I stand here 
to address men younger than myself — to give them some 
advice as they are preparing to embark in the world; and 
I feel a responsibility to truth and to them, from which I 
must not shrink. I dare not dissemble or deceive them, 
for I know that at their entrance upon manhood, the first 
and most pressing temptation to assail them, will be the 
seductive allurements to adventure and speculation, which 
these moral harpies will spread before them, and the next, 
that easy indulgence which a mistaken public feeling ex- 
tends to all who become insolvent, whether by unforseen 
calamity, or by that plain and palpable perdition, which 
awaits all who run the career of hazard, extravagance and 
folly, which we believe is neither honorable nor honest. 
Had these principles and opinions been inculcated by pa- 
rents and preceptors, and then sustained and enforced by 
social approbation as they so well deserve to be, more than 
a moiety of the young men whom within the last ten years 
we have seen wrecked in their fortunes, if not ruined in 
their morals, and blasted with infamy, would have now been 
prosperous in circumstances, honorable and useful in all the 
relations of life. Yes, the victims of that very fate from 
which I would rescue you, they, even they, in the midst of 
their misfortunes, humiliation and shame, will vindicate 
the propriety of these admonitions, and deplore that they 
did not themselves seasonably have and heed such advice. 



37 



When society permits men to provide for themselves, 
and to accumulate such property as they can lawfully ac- 
quire, that very permission creates a duty, and binds each 
to work out his own subsistence without any infringement 
of the same privilege in others. Men are made equal in 
this chance of accumulation, and it is against all the prin- 
ciples of equal rights, for any one man to take from an- 
other what belongs to him ; and they who live on others, 
whether by force or fraud, by the pretence of business 
and position, or any other cheating, violate the fast foun- 
dations of all society, and ought not to be accounted repu- 
table within it. Educated and professional men are apt 
to fancy that they must support a certain style in life, 
whatever may be their income, and it is but too common 
to see them reckless and indifferent to every thing like 
probity and independence in their pecuniary affairs. 1 
advise you to take the opposite course, to make it your 
first object to live within your means, and your next to 
amass some property. No matter if your income be small, 
still live within it, and lay up something. A man who 
cannot save something out of a small income, never will 
do it out of a large one. It is of no moment that you can 
save only a trifle, for it is not the amount that you begin 
with or can then save, that is any thing, but the art, the 
secret, the ability to do it, and the habit of doing it, this 
is the important matter, the thing that will be of value to 
you and facilitate and insure your future success, when 
you can save that which will be worth possessing. I do 
not care to have you grow into great wealth, for that is 
neither a benefit nor a blessing to any man, but I am anx- 
ious to impress you with the importance of securing a 
competence, a reasonable independence, for without it the 



38 



temptations, trials and exigencies of life may impair your 
integrity, usefulness and honor. If he be dishonest who 
does wrong to supply his wants, he must be twice a knave 
who will do it to add to his abundance. 

Indebtedness is bondage, and the man who allows him- 
self to incur obligations that he cannot pay, to live on at 
the expense and loss of others, or to risk what he cannot 
lose, must be so dormant in his moral sense that he is dan- 
gerous to himself and others. The course that I have re- 
commended you to pursue will do more than to benefit 
yourselves, for it will lead you into those habits, manners 
and principles which lie at the foundation of all private 
and public welfare ; it will make you patterns and exam- 
ples of probity, prudence and propriety in your respec- 
tive communities, and it will conciliate and reconcile and 
attach those who cannot have the advantages which you 
have possessed to that cause of education, which shall 
through you requite to the mass of men a benignant and 
beneficial return for allowance, encouragement and sanc- 
tion, and it will show to the world that education is not 
and need not be hostile, but may be, and through you is 
of service to the whole and not to you only, but to others 
and to all. Rely upon it that the plain and every day 
virtues and excellencies of life make up all that is most 
valuable in the world. Talent, education, manners, fash- 
ion, elegance, magnificence may and do adorn and grace 
these homely traits, but without the sterling and standard 
attributes of character, they are a nuisance and a curse. 
You as educated and elevated men must cast your influ- 
ence where it can do most good, and thus repay to the 
world an adequate and an honest recompense for the bles- 
sings and benefits, the privileges and advantages which 
Providence and society have bestowed upon you. 



39 



But I must close. Perhaps you will think that the dis- 
course I have now made to you, runs far and wide from 
the usual line of such occasions. It may be that it does, 
and should it be rightly censurable in this respect, I still 
trust that it may prove in the end a source of advantage 
and usefulness to you. As you perceive, I have not said 
one word to elevate you in your own opinions — one sylla- 
ble to exalt you in your pride of heart, to make you feel 
yourselves above and far distant from your fellow men. 
But I have sought to open to you some views of your na- 
ture, your duty and your destiny, which might lead you to 
reflections and thoughts of your own, more beneficial to 
you than any thing that I could say. I have spoken for 
humanity ; I have vindicated the rights of man ; 1 have 
connected our institutions and principles as a people with 
their great original, the religion of our God ; of that De- 
ity, who made man in his own image. I have tried to 
show you your place and part in the great drama of life, 
upon which you are so soon to enter. I have studied to 
impress you with a full sense of your obligations as men 
and as Americans, as freemen and as christians. I have 
delineated your duty. I have made your career no path 
of ease and sure success ; but one, as you will find it, of 
doubt, difficulty and danger, wherein, however, if a man 
do not achieve prosperity, he may at least deserve it. Go, 
then, into that world, and upon those duties, and take with 
you this advice and admonition from him who has prece- 
ded you only a few years, and who has in his experience 
found but this one conviction and conclusion to tell you, 
that the right, the just, the true, the honest, the benevo- 
lent, the good, are more and mightier, wiser and worthier, 
than the great, or the glorious ; and are, after all, all and 
the only objects worthy of the regard of an immortal nature. 



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